Dwarika Nath High School students raise slogans against its principal. Picture by Prakash Kumar

Muzaffarpur, May 12: The district education department has slapped a showcause notice on the principal of Government Dwarika Nath High School, Tripurari Sharan Mishra, for allegedly delaying to give the benefits of the Mukhyamantri Cycle Yojana to the students.

Mishra’s role has come under the scanner after he did not give money to the beneficiaries to the students of Class IX.

The district education officer, R.N. Pandey, has completed an in-depth investigation following serious protests by the students on Wednesday.

The students have been denied the money meant for the cycles to them by the Principal on the pretext of being “busy with too much work”.

Muzaffarpur district magistrate (DM) Santosh Kumar Mall had intervened and directed to the district education officer to probe the reasons behind the students’ protests.

Mall has also taken a serious note of the incident of the use of force against students by the employees of the school. The district education officer has furnished the detailed probe report to the Mall for necessary action.

On Wednesday, students of the school were roughed up, allegedly on the instructions of the principal, after they demanded cash for bicycles, under the pet scheme of chief minister Nitish Kumar.

The district education officer said the principal has committed mistakes and the students have not been paid the money they are entitled to for their cycles. The principal has been rebuked and served notices for his carelessness and remaining indifferent to the perfect execution of the Mukhyamantri Cycle Yojana at the school.

Pandey added that the education department had allotted money under the yojana to the school concerned in the February this year. But the principal instead of distributing it among the beneficiaries kept the students in the dark.

“Whenever the students demanded money or enquired about it, the principal either evaded the questions or asked them to go. The students never got any satisfactory answers. This caused irritation among the students who went on vandalism on the school premises on Wednesday,” the DEO said.

He said the principal has been warned for using force against the school students and added that he would be taken to task if they resorted such “whimsical style of functioning”.

On Thursday, very few students attended the school. Even the principal was absent.

Sources said the principal has expedited the process of opening a new bank account for 500 students of the school at Kalyani branch of State Bank of India (SBI) to facilitate the payment through account payee cheques for purchasing cycles. Pandey had warned the principal to not disburse cash to the students and asked him to explore possibilities of opening a bank account to provide account payee cheques to them.